


Dark Side Turn

by RoeOcean



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Akumatized Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir, Akumatized Main Character(s), Chat Blanc - Freeform, Extremely Dubious Consent, F/M, Miraculous Ladybug Love Square, Mother Complex, Mother-Daughter Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-31
Updated: 2020-01-31
Packaged: 2021-02-25 14:22:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22497532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RoeOcean/pseuds/RoeOcean
Summary: HawkMoth targets Sabine when there's a rift in the Dupain-Cheng family. Chat Noir tries to help, and is caught up in a fierce storm of his own feelings, leading him to absorb Sabine's akuma and transform into Chat Blanc.Ladybug will remember this.
Relationships: Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir/Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug
Comments: 4
Kudos: 59





	Dark Side Turn

Marinette was used to being an only child. 

At first she had wanted a little brother or sister to play with; she dreamt vividly of her mother’s belly swelling as if she were watching it in a time-lapse video. And then suddenly, in her arms, there would be a cute, small baby who had eyes, ears, and a nose like hers and hair that seemed to show blue under certain lights. She would cradle the tiny thing in her arms and coo to it softly. It never responded.

And after she woke up, she would sometimes think of this sibling, this secret creation of her imagination. What would they do together? She would show them all the wonders of Paris: their home above the bakery, always heavily scented with chocolate and patisseries; the park next door, with its lovely carousel of horses and friendly neighborhood children; and the Eiffel Tower; the Louvre; her school; and best of all: her friends. 

Marinette used to daydream about this fantasy sibling and their adventures so often that she would get reprimanded in class for not paying attention. Chloe always wore a look of particularly devilish joy when a strict teacher slapped Marinette’s wrist for her carelessness. 

Then, as the years passed and the sibling still did not appear, she began to think less and less about a potential playmate and gave more focus to forming relationships with real friends. By the time she was 7 she only asked her parents about a new baby every other week, and when she turned 10 she was just as happy playing by herself as she was joining others in their games at the park. Now that she was 14 she barely dreamed of a sibling at all, and instead listened to Alya and Juleka and her other classmates bemoan their troubles with theirs.

“My little sisters are so naughty sometimes, and my parents never do anything to discipline them! And when I tell my mom or my dad about something terrible they’ve done, they say I should stay out of it!” Alya complained frequently. 

“Luka plays his guitar until 2 a.m. on the weekends,” Juleka sighed, voice grim and heavy. “I think he sneaks off the boat at night during the week too. I’m worried about him, but I don’t want to pry into his personal life. I am sad that he won’t tell me where he’s going. I thought that we were pretty close.” 

Others chimed in with their own gripes about their families, and Marinette, not for the first time, was secretly glad that she didn’t have a sibling. 

Which made it all the more jarring when one morning, as she was sleepily descending the stairs to the kitchen, she heard her parents arguing. Arguing about the last thing she would expect them to argue about.

“Sabine, I told you last week, I do not want to have another child.” 

“But Tom, my darling, I think the time is right. The boulangerie & patisserie is doing better than ever, and we have extra space in the house.” 

Marinette froze on the stairs. Tikki, who had been resting on her lady’s shoulder, perked up with some concern, and exchanged a glance with Marinette. The poor girl looked at once bewildered and taken aback with alarm.

“Go downstairs,” Tikki urged, but Marinette grabbed her and quickly stuffed the little kwami in her purse. She then sat on the edge of a step and braced her hands against the wall, listening as hard as she could.

“I think we’re perfect as a family of three, cherie. Besides, how do you think Marinette would take the news? She hasn’t asked for a little brother or sister for years.” 

“The baby isn’t for our daughter. It’s for us, Tom. I have wanted at least one more, you know that, but circumstances postponed an addition to the family. Now I feel that I--that we--are ready to welcome another child.” 

Marinette heard her father sigh, and some bustling about in the kitchen. She held her breath. 

“I don’t know, Sabine. I must think more about this.” 

“As long as you’re considering it, my darling. That’s all I ask.” 

The conversation seemed to end there, on a bit of an unsure note. Marinette could feel the tension rising, like summer heat cutting through the cool, and remained motionless on the stairs. A baby? Now? What was her mother thinking? 

“Marinette!” 

Shocked into motion, she stood. Her mother had come round to the stairs to call for her, and was no doubt surprised to find her lurking. “Marinette, come down. We made chocolate croissants.”

At the bar facing the small but functional family kitchen, Marinette nibbled on the morning’s delicate, buttery delight. She broke off small pieces and stuffed them into her purse, as an apology for rudely shoving Tikki in there. She hoped she could make it up to the little kwami with a sweet breakfast. 

Marinette noticed that her mother and father were avoiding each other. Tom was frying eggs with such focus that he hadn’t even greeted her, and her mother had already gone to the bakery level to open the shop for customers. 

“Papa?” 

Tom started. “What is it, dear?” 

“I-I heard what you and Maman were saying.” 

He flinched, and Marinette saw the muscles of his shoulders bunch up. His jaw set rigidly. 

“Oh?” 

She played with the last bites of her croissant. “It’s not up to me, but you shouldn’t worry about what I think anyway. It’s your decision. Don’t...don’t say no just because of me.” 

Tom smiled a little bit, but it was tight. He turned towards her calmly, slowly, with a weary sigh. She could tell that this was weighing on him. 

Her father said, “My dear, it’s you who shouldn’t be worrying about this. I’m sure it will be out of your mother’s mind by this afternoon.” 

Marinette attempted a smile, for his sake. “Okay, Papa.” 

But she wasn’t so certain.

***

“What? Girl, that’s totally crazy! Your mom is so old, how would she even get pregnant?” Alya exclaimed, shaking her head at Marinette’s story. 

The two were sitting in the courtyard at school. The bell for the first period of the day, homeroom, hadn’t rung yet. Marinette had been so troubled by the conversation she had overheard that she had practically run to school to tell Alya all about it in person. This wasn’t something she would share over texts. 

“My mom isn’t that old! Come on Alya. Your mom is older than my mom and she still had kids after you.” 

Alya stroked her chin, making a big show of thinking seriously about it, but she was grinning all the same. “You come on, Marinette! I’m positive what your dad said is true. There’s no way they’d want to raise another child now.” 

Marinette frowned, taking the statement as a slight. “Hey!” 

Her friend’s grin widened. “How could they, when they’ve got the best girl in the world right here!”

Alya laughed and slung her arm around Marinette’s shoulders, squeezing her tightly. The two girls giggled, heads bowed together in light laughter. Marinette wrapped her arms around Alya and hugged her right back, a smile growing on her lips despite her earlier anxiety. 

“What’re you two conspiring about?” A playful voice broke in. 

Marinette and Alya looked up. It was Nino, and right beside him, Adrien. 

“Oh, noth--” Marinette started to say, but Alya cut her off. 

“Mme. Dupain-Cheng is baby-crazy, and Marinette’s worried that she’ll lose her place as prodigal daughter,” she blurted, laughter filtering through her fingers. “I’m trying to tell her she has nothing to worry about, really!” 

“What? Baby-crazy?” Nino said, smirking. He sat down on the other side of Marinette, and placed a hand on her shoulder. “Dude, don’t freak. If it’s meant to be, it’s meant to be, you know?” 

Adrien remained standing, but nodded with a gentle, sympathetic smile, looking into Marinette’s eyes with quiet sincerity. “Alya and Nino have the right idea. Besides, it’s possible she might change her mind. She’s not pregnant yet, right?” 

A flush spread over Marinette’s cheeks under the scrutiny of her friends. She stared at her feet, fidgeting. “I don’t think she is. Apparently, she’s just been talking to my dad about it for the past week.” 

“There, you see? Nothing’s going to happen. And even if it does, you’ll have nine months to prepare for it!” Alya slapped Marinette’s back, grin never having left her face. “I’ll share all my best tips for surviving the incoming infant mania.” 

Marinette looked up, alarmed. “Mania?” 

“I think she meant, in case your mom starts to over-prepare,” Adrien said, trying to lower Marinette’s anxiety down to a manageable level, “But, however unlikely it is, you’ll have time to get used to it, if it happens.” 

“Well said, my bro!” Nino held out his hand for a fist-bump, which Adrien accepted. 

Marinette felt just a bit better. “Thanks, you guys.” 

The rest of the day, she thought Adrien (and her other friends, besides Alya, because she knew she could handle it) was treating her especially nicely. Not that he wasn’t a perfect gentleman all the time always. It was just the extra care he seemed to pay her: the way he made sure to pick up things she clumsily dropped even if they landed by someone else, or the way he passed the ball to her quite a few times during PE. She liked his attention. She liked it a lot. 

So gradually, over the course of the day, the stress about her parents fighting drained away. 

***

Over the next month or so, Marinette didn’t hear anything about the baby. Her parents were still acting a little distant around each other, though, so she was still worried. But she didn’t know how to bring up the subject to them. It was their decision, after all. Even if she did want to say that she would be fine with it (and she wasn’t so sure that she was, even after giving it some thought), it didn’t matter what she wanted. It was up to them.

As the weeks passed and nothing was mentioned about a baby, however, Marinette grew less and less anxious about the matter. She convinced herself that her mother had dropped it entirely, and was relieved. She rarely thought about it, and kept busy with her usual crazy schedule. 

But one evening, after returning home from Alya’s place, Marinette was surprised, and more than a little alarmed, to find that the baby was still very much a dark cloud hanging over the Dupain-Cheng household. 

“Tom. You cannot put this out of your mind, because this is still an ongoing discussion I am very interested in having,” Sabine was saying, ice crystalizing her words as Marinette poked her head into the boulangerie’s backroom.

“M-maman,” Marinette whispered from the doorway, dread wrapping its fingers around her throat. She rarely, if ever, witnessed her parents fighting, and she had never seen her mother’s mien so cold. Sabine had kind words for everyone, especially for her family, so something must be truly, desperately wrong if her husband was on the receiving end of one of the frostiest stares Marinette had ever seen in her life, including those from Chloe and Lila.

Tom was at the counter shaping dough, but his large hands had paused in their work, poised above a tray of unbaked loaves. His great shoulders sagged, and he seemed much more dusty with flour than usual. His back was to his wife and daughter, expression unknown. When he spoke, his tone was gentle and firm, but low. “Sabine, we’ve talked about this every single day for the past few months. I have decided. I do not want another child.” 

Marinette gaped. Every single day? Months? Clearly she had not been privy to those conversations, because she had had no idea. But now she understood why her mother and father had not seemed as cheery as they usually were these past couple of weeks. Feuding silently about this, hiding it from their daughter, and just generally being locked in a stalemate over this enormous decision must be absolutely draining for them both. Marinette’s heart swelled with pity and love for her parents. Before she could say anything, however, her mother turned as if to leave, and spotted her lurking. 

“Oh!” Sabine gasped. “Marinette.” The iciness melted a little bit, but it was still there. Marinette could see it on her mother’s face. The coldness was striking in the way it set her brow, and her normally plump, rosy cheeks were pale and drawn into a hard line of her mouth. Marinette swallowed a lump in her throat. 

Tom turned around too, and sighed. He looked so tired. “Marinette…” 

For a moment all three of them stood there, hesitating in the silence, waiting for something to ease the tension. Marinette couldn’t speak; she felt a vice around her voice that she just couldn’t break. What could she say, anyway? She had no place to tell either of them what to do or say in this situation. They weren’t her peers, and they weren’t doing anything wrong. This was a way more complex issue than her math homework that Tikki was currently napping under in her knapsack. 

Marinette… couldn’t help. She was lost. 

Then Sabine said, harshly and to the ground, “I’m going to take a walk.” 

She swept past Marinette, who did nothing to stop her, untying the ribbons of her apron as she did so. 

Tom and Marinette heard the bell of the front door tinkle loudly as Sabine opened and shut it with somewhat more force than was necessary. 

Once she was gone, the oppressive silence bore down on them again. Then Tom gave his daughter a small, sad smile, and turned slowly back to the white lumps of dough on the counter stone. 

“Papa,” Marinette said quietly, just to say something, anything, that would break the awful stillness, “I’m sor--”

“It will be okay, my love,” Tom said in an equally hushed voice. “It will be fine.” 

Upon hearing her father’s tone, so soft and sad that it seemed as if he were trying to hold back more than he let on, Marinette stepped across the threshold, walking with tears pricking the corners of her eyes. When she reached Tom, she spread her arms as widely as she could, hugging her father’s back. He grunted, surprised, and then turned a little to the side, returning the embrace with one of his flour-caked arms. She saw the glisten of unshed emotion turn the whites of his eyes red as she stared unhappily up at him. 

“Papa...” 

“Marinette. I need some time alone.” 

Not knowing what else to do, she nodded and disengaged from the hug. Marinette crept up the stairs to her room to start her homework, leaving her father to shape the bread for the next day. 

Once she had closed the hatch to her room and sat down in her desk chair though, she found that she couldn’t concentrate on anything. After a few minutes of poring through notes with Tikki encouraging her sleepily from the sidelines, Marinette stretched, restless, and got up to get some fresh air. 

A soft breeze greeted her as she pulled herself onto her rooftop balcony. Tikki followed, floating aimlessly near her shoulder. Neither of them said anything. Marinette walked to the railing and leaned her elbows on it, putting her head in her hands. 

“I know it’s not my fault, but I can’t help but feel sort of… helpless,” Marinette said aloud, possibly to Tikki, but mostly to no one. 

“I’m sorry,” the little kwami replied, settling on her lady’s shoulder and nuzzling her cheek. “I know it’s tough right now, Marinette. But sometimes... it’s not your place to help. Your parents need to work this out.” 

Marinette sniffed. “I’ve never seen Maman so angry before. It was like she was someone else. It was scary.” 

Tikki said nothing, gazing solemnly across the skyline of Paris, eyes unhampered by the gathering darkness of twilight. 

The two of them were silent for a time, watching the city lights twinkle near and far, the moon reflecting on the Seine. Faint music from Notre Dame could be heard on the wind, along with distant sounds of chatter and footsteps as people walked along the rue. It was relaxing, and Marinette’s melancholy slowly eased as she and Tikki were enveloped in the calm of a Paris evening. 

***

Not far away, a different kind of darkness was growing, re-emerging from slumber near the heart of the city. 

“Ah, I sense that a mother’s dejection has driven her out of the arms of her loving family and into the night, searching for a path to follow when she feels she is left without options.”  
Hawkmoth sneered, surveying the expanse of the metropolis below him. The gloom in his tower after sundown, even with Paris’s lights aglow, cast lengthening shadows on his long, haunted face. “Fear not, mother; I will give you the opportunity to seize what you desire, without condescending to ask for permission from others. You will have what you seek, if you give me something in return.” 

Hawkmoth raised a palm to the air, and a butterfly approached. No sooner had it landed on his outstretched hand than he cupped it and performed his wicked power. Its bright wings turned black, and it fluttered out between his fingers, drawn towards the scent of its victim miles away. 

“Now fly my little Akuma, and darken her heart!”

***

Sabine had gone into a little cafe not far from her family’s boulangerie et patisserie, and had been stirring her tea for the past several minutes, staring without seeing at the sugar dissolving in the bottom of her cup. She had just had enough of a clear mind to grab a jacket before storming out, and now that she was sitting here she felt… well, a number of things, but at the forefront of her mind was a strange sense of hollowness, and an encroaching grief that she did not completely understand. 

She sat, and she stirred her tea, and the waitress avoided her table for the third time because she was probably making an absolutely unappealing face, the kind of face you would shudder at before turning around and walking swiftly in the opposite direction. But Sabine did not care. She had to sit, and she had to think. And she might as well do that in a warm, cozy little cafe with good tea and biscuits. Biscuits which she had yet to order, because everyone was giving her a wide berth. 

Right as she was considering flagging down the waitress, a flutter of wings brushed by her ear. A strange sound, akin to the distorted ring of a bell, followed. 

Suddenly, the feeling of hollowness and grief that Sabine had been dwelling on was overwhelming, torrential, consuming her every thought. An undercurrent of anger swelled along with them, screaming that she had every right to take what she felt was owed. Moving in tandem, these three powerful, negative emotions dominated Sabine’s mind. 

Hawkmoth sensed his cue, and took the opportunity to enter. 

“Mother Hood, I am Hawkmoth. I know you’ve been unhappy for months; you want to welcome a new child into your family, a noble ambition, but your selfish husband will not allow it to come to pass. With my help, you won’t need his assent to reach your goal. Trust me, join me, and you will have the life you’ve always wanted. I only request two things in return: Ladybug and Chat Noir’s miraculouses!” 

Sabine sat upright, rigid, transfixed by the villain’s words. She could see herself, clothed in shimmering white and blue, standing over all of the men in Paris. She held them in the palm of her hand, and they held the key to her child. 

The allure of this vision was so seductive, and it was being offered to her as a gift. A real chance. It was everything she could have ever hoped for. She didn’t need to think twice. 

“Yes, Hawkmoth. I accept your gracious generosity. I won’t let you down.” 

Sabine began to transform. 

***

Marinette had gone back into her room in an attempt to complete at least a little bit of homework before bed, and was absorbed for about an hour in the readings for Monday. When she finished the chapters assigned however, a familiar, unwelcome sense of unease started creeping up on her again, and she was unfocused and clumsy trying to do her algebra. After Tikki gently suggested that she had the incorrect answer for the third time on the second problem in a 15-problem set, Marinette sank in her chair and sighed. 

“I need a break. I’m going out on the balcony again.” 

“Okay,” Tikki said, chewing on some cake and looking over the math set, “Take care.” 

It was well and truly dark out now, and the last dregs of pink sunset were draining into the basin of the night sky. Marinette inhaled a deep lungful of cool air and let it out slowly. 

Paris lay sparkling all around her, beautifully lit as it always was in the evening. There were less people on the street, but a few walked about here and there. Marinette grasped the balcony railing and leaned over, searching for any sign of her mother. It was possible she had already returned home, but if she had then Marinette was sure her mother would’ve come to check on her. 

“Maman… I hope you’re alright.” 

Marinette tilted her head to the sky. She couldn’t see any stars, only inky blackness, dissolving into yellow on the edges. The unease that had stolen over her body and was residing somewhere between her chest and her stomach sent a sudden ripple of gooseflesh along her skin. She told herself she was just feeling chilly, and turned to head inside when something winked out of the corner of her eye. Curious, and discomfitingly relieved to be diverted from her own thoughts, she went back to the railing. 

In the distance Marinette could see someone leaping and bounding across the rooftops, probably not a mile off. Chat Noir. 

‘That’s right, he’s doing the rounds tonight. I wonder if I should try to get his attention and say something to him…’ Marinette shook her head, but her intuition was telling her that her gut was right. ‘I don’t know if this feeling I’m having is something to be worried about, and I’ve never known Maman to be anything but calm and rational… but…’

Chat Noir was moving at a fast clip, away from the Dupain-Cheng household and towards the Eiffel Tower; she was going to lose him if she didn’t act now. There was no time to rush inside to grab Tikki. She was going to have to talk to him as Marinette. 

Turning up the brightness on her phone as high as it could go, Marinette stood on her tippy-toes and stretched her arm out, turning the phone to the right, center, and left, then back again. At range it could be read as a makeshift morse code light. Marinette could only hope her message stood out enough from all of the other brilliant twinkles of Paris. 

That hope solidified in a hot minute after Chat Noir stopped suddenly on the further bell tower of Notre Dame. At this distance she could only make out his silhouette, a deep black against the backdrop of the night, even though the rues and apartments were well lit. She kept up the blinking, twisting her wrist in a more deliberate, meaningful pattern. The shadow cocked his head, seemingly studying the signal. A grin lifted Marinette’s lips when the superhero changed course, dropping to a balustrade and picking out the best path towards her house. 

She watched him as he came closer, and arched an eyebrow when he performed an admittedly impressive, carelessly casual tightrope walk along the telephone wires that connected several of the buildings on opposite sides of the road. She wondered if he did that just for her. 

One wire led right to her roof, a few feet above her head, and she was no less amused when he greeted her by hooking his knees around the cable and swinging in front of her face. He was so close now that they were practically nose-to-nose. She fought the urge to playfully swat him. 

“Hey there, Ma-ri-nette. Been a while. How’re things?” 

They’d actually taken down an akumatized villain on Tuesday, but whatever. She would not accidentally tell him that. “Hi, Chat. You can get down now. You don’t want all of your blood rushing to your head.” Marinette giggled, stepping back and placing her index finger on his forehead, attempting to push him away. As expected, one finger was not enough to budge him even slightly, and he grinned at her sorry attempt. 

“Don’t worry about me! It’s good that my blood’s going to my head.” 

She stared blankly at him. “As opposed to where?” 

“Um…” There was an odd beat of hesitation, but he continued, “Outside of my body?”

Marinette rolled her eyes. “Like you ever get hit! You’re quite acrobatic. Or maybe I should say, ‘acrocatic,’ heh.” 

“Haha! Good one. But you’re wrong, little lady. I have been hit!” Chat crossed his arms over his chest in what he probably thought was a dramatic gesture, rather resembling a cat-suited Dracula reposing in a signature upside-down slumber. 

For a moment Marinette’s already piqued anxiety morphed into real fear, and her hands shot out to clutch his shoulders. “When? Tonight?” 

Chat seemed startled by her concern. His eyes flicked to her hands squeezing the latex of his suit. It was one of the few times she had touched him without gloves; the warmth of his body seeped into her chilled fingers. Marinette noted with misplaced bemusement that the latex was weirdly slick, but not from wetness. She should’ve known that was just how latex felt, but she couldn’t help being distracted by the texture, thoughtlessly giving his shoulders a bit of a rub. 

“You like the suit, huh?” Chat teased, breaking through Marinette’s bubble. She felt heat creep up her neck, and her arms fled to her sides. 

“Sorry. When you said you’d been hurt--” 

“Ah. Probably a bad time for a joke. I was going to say--” he thumped the center of his chest for emphasis, “I’ve been struck by an arrow of love for a long time! And the pain has never left me. They say you shouldn’t pull it out on your own, you know. You could die.” 

Marinette exhaled a puff of air, ruffling her bangs. She knew what he was talking about. “So you were just being overdramatic.” 

Chat shook his head, shrugging in a supplicating manner. “What can I say? I am a very theatrical cat.”

He’d definitely left an opening there for a pun; his last two words were practically begging to be smushed together in a hilarious portmanteau. It was probably causing him real physical suffering not to complete the joke. She could see it in his eyes and the gentle incline of his mouth. He wanted her to say it. Marinette supposed it was a roundabout apology of sorts for worrying her. He hadn’t forgotten why he was here, he had just wanted to lighten the mood a little.

So she crossed her arms, gave him a weary, hooded side-eye that belied the smile threatening to emerge, and said, “‘Thecatrical.’”

Chat clapped his hands. “There it is! Okay, anyway, I got your S.O.S. What’s up, Marinette?” 

Right. She hadn’t called him over here to chat. His presence had alleviated her mood somewhat, but she could feel the cold claws of fear gripping her still. Her smile slipped away. “It’s… it’s my mom. I’m worried about her. She left earlier and she hasn’t come back. At least, I don’t think she has.” 

Chat Noir’s eyes widened, and his smirk disappeared. “Did something happen?” 

“No,” she hedged, not comfortable enough with him as herself to discuss her parents’ fight, “but I can’t help feeling like something will. I saw you and I just felt like I should tell you, in case Hawkmoth targets her.” Marinette found her gaze drawn towards the city, and Chat followed her line of sight. 

“Thank you, Marinette. You’re a very thoughtful girl,” he said softly. “If I find your mother I can try to prevent an attack, but I’ll need Ladybug’s help.” 

Those last words were said in an even softer tone, underlied with wistfulness. Gooseflesh raised along Marinette’s arms again. She blinked. “Um, you should go, then! I don’t think my mom went too far. She probably didn’t leave our street.” 

Chat nodded. “Alright. I’ll send her home to you and your father as soon as I can.” Then, without a hint of hesitation or humor, he reached out to grip her shoulder, and patted it delicately. His palm was pleasantly warm through her thin sweatshirt. She stared into his luminous, bottle-green gaze, and blindly found his hand with her own, enclosing it with a squeeze. He surprised her further by adding, “I promise.” With that, he swung upright, balancing on the wire like a cat on a razor-thin fence, and took off at speed. Marinette saw him pull out his baton phone as he slid into the shadows once more. 

‘He’s calling Ladybug.’ Marinette glanced guiltily at the trap door that led to her bedroom, worrying her bottom lip. ‘Tikki is supposed to be on a break tonight, and I haven’t seen any sign of an actual akuma, but…’ 

Marinette paced, rubbing her arms. The chill in her gut was whispering that she should transform, that something terrible was going to happen. Her instincts, especially when it came to all of this mythological superhero stuff, had seldom steered her wrong. 

But.

It was her maman. She’d be fighting her mother. And sure, she’d fought countless people who were close to her. Her friends. Her uncle and grandfather (mercifully she somehow hadn’t had to go toe-to-toe with her father). Everyone woke up from the nightmare of uncontrollable evil relatively unscathed, without ever remembering their dark side turn. 

But. She remembered. 

She tried to put the monstrous versions of her friends out of her mind. They weren’t themselves when they were akumatized, not really. Alya was not the same person who pinned her against a wall and threatened to reveal her identity to the world… Alix did not steal Chat Noir’s life essence so that she could skate through time for her own selfish desires… even Chloe’s aura of rage and sadistic glee as she swung a gigantic sword at Ladybug’s head wasn’t her true self. The villains who had done those terrible things did not exist consciously. 

And yet, Marinette always felt a strange sense of deja vu whenever she saw one of her classmates engaging in something their villainous turn had prompted: Kim had picked up archery and was surprisingly good at it (she avoided going to his competitions); Nathaniel spent nearly all of his time drawing, and his illustrations were tending more and more towards hyperrealism (after introducing him to Marc she left them alone, even when he asked for her opinion on the latest Ladybug issues); Rose’s perfume collection had grown to the point where she wore a mix of them every day (Marinette always excused herself when she caught a particularly strong scent, something that smelled too much like Princess Fragrance). 

Master Fu had suggested that these habits were harmless after-effects of the akumatization process, and that they might fade over time, so Marinette should not be too concerned about them. But that didn’t stop her from noticing, and wondering, and not quite being strong enough to suppress an instinctive recoil or a reflexive squeeze of her purse when faced with one of her friends’ behaviors they had demonstrated during their face-heel turn. 

Marinette did not want to spend the rest of her life afraid of her own mother. 

‘If Ladybug does need to save the day, she’ll save it.’ Marinette climbed down the ladder to her room, and changed into pajamas. Tikki was already fast asleep on her pillow. She kissed the little kwami’s head, and settled into her bed. ‘But for right now, I’m good in here.’ 

***

The sharp sound, a thin, high wail, stopped Chat Noir in his tracks just as he was about to fly over another easy jump between two buildings. He had been searching for a little over twenty minutes for Marinette’s apparently missing mother, scouring the streets and pressing his face against the glass of the many sweet, up-scale little shops lining the boulevard. Usually akumatized people were spotted very quickly due to their flashy performances and demand to fight, so Chat was certain that all he would have to do was escort Mme. Dupain-Cheng back to her husband and daughter. 

He was a little saddened that Marinette hadn’t told him what was wrong. He thought that they were close enough for that! Hadn’t he saved her butt a bunch of times? Hadn’t she confessed her love to him once? Well, that had been a few weeks ago, and she hadn’t seemed heartbroken at all at school the next day, so…? It was all sort of confusing for him. Adrien hadn’t talked to her about it, and had in fact tried to forget the whole thing, not in the least because her father had nearly clawed his face off. In the end he had chalked up her acting normal to girls being very mysterious and unexplainable creatures, to which Plagg had agreed. Still, it made him wonder…

The alley between the two buildings smelled of cigarettes, urine, and trash. Nothing he couldn’t handle, but the scent was pungent and it masked whatever else was floating on the wind. It was dark, too, off of one of the main rue’s side-streets. The ground was far below Chat. He kneeled, one hand grasping the ledge for support as he leaned and squinted into the trench.

There were bodies below him. For a second he thought that none of them were moving, but then a figure dressed in light clothing arched their back, raising their head to the sky. Their mouth was open, smiling wide and wet. Chat couldn’t see the top half of figure’s face; it was obscured by a large, white hood that was pulled low over their eyes.

Oh no. Oh, god. 

He was too late to bring Mme. Dupain-Cheng home. 

*** 

Mother Hood snapped the canister to her hip, and pulled out a fresh one ready to collect more of the sample. The man underneath her groaned. 

“Hush, pet. You’re such a good boy,” she whispered against the shell of his ear. “Let Mother take care of you.” 

“P-please, I can’t--” 

She gripped him hard, twisting. He gasped and whimpered. The canister filled, almost overflowed. “Yes, you can. See? Your body wants to help me, even if you don’t.” 

The man’s eyes rolled back in his head. With a last futile struggle, he fell limply against the concrete. 

Mother Hood milked the last few drops from the man, sealed and stored the canister, and turned to the others on the ground. They were positioned similarly to their friend: wrists, thighs, and ankles pinned by icy links to the hard alley street; belts and zippers undone, heads lolling but twitching at the sight of a woman so ready to take them. A woman who had already taken many men that night. 

“Now, my dears,” Mother Hood’s blue lips pulled back in a lascivious sneer, “who’s next?” 

“You can try me on for size,” Chat Noir called from the rooftop of the nearer building closing in the small alleyway. 

Mother Hood trained her face skyward. She recognized the young man’s voice. It was the superhero, one of the pair that HawkMoth desired. She knew he saw the men unable to move, could guess at what prompted him to interfere. “Well well well, aren’t you a sweet little pussycat,” she cooed. “You would make a perfect father for my child.” 

Chat Noir blinked, and the villainess could feel with sudden sharp, delicious awareness what he had been thinking. “I’m pretty sure you don’t mean that you want Marinette to call me Daddy, Mme. Dupain-Cheng.”

“Perhaps I do,” Mother Hood taunted. “You can have her after I’m done with you, pretty kitty.”

Abandoning her shackled prey, the woman thrust an icy chain towards Chat, 30 feet up the side of the building. He dodged instead of parrying, disappearing from view as he retreated. Mother Hood followed him, leaving the useless length of chain frozen to the bricks, and ascended the fire escape’s metal ladder with hurried clicks of heels on steel.

She was on the roof in mere seconds, digging the spiked points of her stilettos into the tiles for a better grip on the steep slope, cracking one unfortunate piece of terracotta in half. Chat was nowhere to be seen.

“Here kitty kitty kitty,” her low voice, cold as the night surrounding her, hissed. “Where did you go?” 

Mother Hood produced another freezing chain in her hand, unbothered by the chill on her bare skin that would leave anyone else with frostbite. She sought her new, agile game through senses gifted to her by her miraculous transformation. The cat’s feeling of awkward, mislaid desire for the one called Marinette would reveal his hiding place. The signature of his arousal was heavy all around; all she had to do was pinpoint its origin. The klaxon of lust had done for many of her victims that night. 

Sending out glacial tendrils of awareness, Mother Hood carefully searched the roof for a hint of passion. She remained where she was on the corner, preserving her advantageous position. All around her Paris glittered, and men slept peacefully in their homes, or walked about the streets below, bundled and safe--for the moment. After she was done playing servant to HawkMoth, Mother Hood vowed to drain every last drop of every last man in the city… perhaps she would not even stop there. Wouldn’t it be grand to take a drink from la creme de la creme in Lyon, Marseille, and Strasbourg? And why should the rest of continental Europe be closed to her? Belgium, Germany, Italy… there were so many choices! 

“No,” a harsh voice in her ear cut through her thoughts. “You only have power in Paris. You will remain in Paris.” 

“HawkMoth,” Mother Hood said coolly, not realizing that she had been murmuring her dreams aloud. “Grant me more.” 

“More? You have not given me what we agreed, yet you ask for more?” His tone was almost sardonic, but contempt shot through it. “Watch yourself, woman. Heed my request, and then we’ll talk.” 

A noise sounded from the far side of the roof, and Mother Hood whipped her chain towards the commotion. When she tried to pull it back it would not budge, and she suspected she knew the reason why. 

“I’ve hooked a major fish,” she announced dryly to an already irritable HawkMoth. “A catfish, I believe.” 

“Go get him!” the head villain snapped. Mother Hood was slightly disappointed that he had not replied with the very obvious wordplay she had practically handed to him on a platter. She made a note that he would not be a very good father for her child. 

***

“Damn,” Chat hissed as he struggled with the frozen links that had lashed him to a chimney. He had just made another call to Ladybug, but now he was really stuck. The chain had secured his wrists near his waist, and he did not want to use his cataclysm until he had an idea of how this was going to go. Mme. Dupain-Cheng… no, the villain, whatever her code name was, seemed to have an endless supply of her weapon, while he only had one shot before he had to back off, and he’d rather recharge Plagg knowing that his Lady was fighting this woman.

“Hello young man,” a cool female voice whispered, sending puffs of cold air across his cheek. Chat shivered. 

“Hello yourself. And hi to the giant douche controlling you too. Hey HawkMoth, how’s it going, bud?” 

The villainess laughed lightly, a smile touching her lips before dropping off of her face entirely, replaced by nothing. “HawkMoth is not controlling me. I’m doing this because I want to.” 

Chat turned to her to offer a retort, but when he saw her, the first real look he had gotten of her since tempting her to chase him onto the roof, he just about swallowed his tongue. Instead he bit his lip and closed his eyes, willing himself to calm down before Ladybug inevitably arrived. 

“Oh? What’s the matter, young man? Is this the first time you’ve seen a woman like this?” 

He flinched when she placed a hand on his shoulder, and screwed his eyes tighter shut. This apparently did not dissuade the woman (and why would it, she was a villain); Chat jerked his head to the side when he felt cold fingers brush his jaw. 

It wasn’t exactly true that he hadn’t seen a woman naked, or near-naked, before. He remembered, and had a photograph of, himself as a toddler and his mother in a gigantic bathtub, surrounded by mountains of fluffy bubbles. And he’d been to fashion shows where models, stick-thin and all legs, rushed around in bras, panties, and thigh-high boots. Plus, he lived in France. Nudity, in a non-erotic context, did not generally bother him. But he still felt a bit weird when confronted with sexy ads on his desktop, or when his father was asked to contribute a capsule collection of lingerie for Chanel or Dior. 

Not that he thought he was repressed, but with the way guys at school talked about girls sometimes, he wondered if he might be a little too quick to turn away from that sort of stuff and concentrate on other things instead. And sure, he thought about kissing Ladybug (and possibly doing other things with her too) a lot… like, a lot, but she didn’t want to do that with him. She liked someone else. 

“Relax.” 

The woman pushed her chest against him, and Chat’s entire body tensed. He felt strange. “Hey,” he said through gritted teeth, “My Lady is going to give you a piece of her mind when she gets here.” 

“Oh ho, naughty kitty. Playing with Mother when your Lady of the night leaves you to your own devices.” 

“You… you started it.” Chat tried to pull away, but the chain held, and it was starting to make his midsection feel numb. Mother (god, was that really her code name? He did not want to think about that) continued to press close, and though his suit protected him somewhat, the chill emanating from her skin was distressing. He had to remind himself that this was Marinette’s mother, that she was a real person capable of love and warmth and oh god what is she doing--! 

Her hands were on his thighs, and her knee was nudging between his legs. “I don’t start what I can’t finish,” she murmured, her words barely heard over Chat’s blood roaring in his ears. He could feel his heartbeat in his dick. “And I’m going to finish you.” 

Those words brought a small gasp out of his throat. He couldn’t wait any longer. 

“Cataclysm!” 

The chain that bound him disintegrated, and Chat dropped low, rolling, grabbing onto the gutter of the roof and heaving himself over the edge as a freezing grey blur shot past his head. 

“No! Come back here! Give me my child!” 

Chat did not stop to hear the rest. He bounced on a canopy overhang and landed on all fours on the hard concrete of the sidewalk. Passersby stared and exclaimed as he jumped up and narrowly avoided another chain that crashed into a frozen heap in front of the little bistro upon which Mother had been so eager to engage him. 

“This isn’t over, kitty!” the villain shrieked, cool voice now subzero menace, wicked mouth crying out in icy rage. Wind ruffled the woman’s hood, and Chat stared up at her, rooted to the spot even as his ring and his common sense and his legs urged him to run. The moon haloed Mother as she bent over the rooftop’s ledge, cursing him. The gutter’s metal crunched in her grip. Saliva, mucus, and tears flowed from every orifice in her face. Chat saw with a start, as a particularly rough breeze whipped through and the front fleece of her hood was flung back, that she was blind. 

Confronted by this, and by the civilians of Paris amassing around him on the street, as well as the unmistakable, extremely uncomfortable half-hard dick in his pants, Chat could see no other way out besides making a break for it. 

Saluting the still screaming Mother and nodding to all of the surrounding citizens like this was a completely normal occurrence, he grabbed the top of his baton and extended it, taking off like a shot across the rue and diving into the shadows of another side-street before poling his way across so many backways and alleys, fences and sides of brick buildings that he almost de-transformed before he made it back to his home.

*** 

It was 9 pm, slightly past the time he was supposed to come home from fencing and a team dinner, but he hadn’t received a call from his father or Nathalie. The bodyguard was off tonight, so he had arranged for Adrien to carpool with Kagami and her mother, but Adrien had convinced them earlier that he had something else to do, and that it was a short walk away. Kagami and Tsuguri-san hadn’t objected, but he thought he could feel a slightly accusatory stare dogging his footsteps as he had gone into the locker room to transform. He knew that Ladybug would not be showing up that night (they rotated their days off and usually did the rounds together on weekdays), but it didn’t stop him from doing his duty to protect Paris.

Which made it all the more frustrating (and kind of humiliating, if he were being honest) that he had been stupefied by a small woman in half--no, a quarter-- of a parka, fishnets, and stiletto heels. Even Ladybug didn’t distract him this much on a good day. There was also the matter that Mother was Marinette’s mother, who was much older than him, and what she was doing was so, so illegal and wrong… so why was he the one feeling guilty? Why had it felt… good? 

“Ugh, it’s not going down,” Adrien muttered as he slumped in his desk chair, frowning at his crotch. “I have to get back out there.” 

Plagg inhaled a round of camembert, and ripped into another package too, furiously munching. He appeared not to have heard anything Adrien had just said. 

“Hey, what’s with you? You don’t usually eat this much afterwards.” 

Between gulping and chewing, Plagg gave an exasperated side-eye to his charge. “Not usually, no. But something about that struggle has me feeling really hungry. It took a lot of my strength to shield you from the effects… seems like she got through, though.” He looked pointedly at Adrien’s groin, and they both groaned.

“I’m sorry. I don’t know what happened. And… it’s… not going away,” Adrien finished sheepishly, cutting his eyes from Plagg’s peeved stare. 

“Kid, I know we’re close, but I’d rather you, uh, take care of that before you call on me again tonight. And don’t let her touch you next time. You might not get away so easily, and cleaning spunk out of the suit is something I don’t want to spend my Saturday doing.” 

Adrien blushed, feeling indignant. “H-has it happened before?”

“You wouldn’t be the first. But every time, I keep hoping it’ll be the last.” He shrugged, and, correctly sensing Adrien’s need for privacy via a pouty, doe-eyed look, said, “I’ll be in the cheese cupboard.” 

Nodding, Adrien waited until the kwami had sealed himself in his vault, and then stood up to trudge over to his bed. His dick was starting to feel painfully tight; it had reached a fully hard state while he had been desperately backflipping his way home. He hadn’t masturbated in a while, hadn’t really felt the need; though his guy friends at school sometimes boasted about how much jacking off they had done that day, or that week, Adrien’s libido hovered between low and non-existant most of the time. 

Putting on the suit was a different matter. As Chat Noir, and being so close to Ladybug, arousal spiked his pulse and made his dick throb as soon as his thoughts were stuck in a particularly racy rut. It was hard not to think about, what with his Lady in her second-skin suit brushing against him, rubbing on him sometimes, catching him, letting him catch her. It drove him mad, but he had gotten it under control. The lust wasn’t enough to be debilitating, and his sex drive usually calmed down a few hours after he was back to being plain ol’ Adrien. 

He had wondered, vaguely at times and distinctly distraught during others, why Chat Noir seemed to peel back this layer of raw sexuality he didn’t really feel at any other point in his life. He had tried asking Plagg, skirting around the question of the cause of the desire itself, but the kwami had been a little cagey about it, putting the blame on ‘teenage human male tendencies’ more than giving a real answer. It was frustrating and embarrassing, because he didn’t think of himself as a person who lost his cool around girls, especially around ones he admired and respected so much. But being mad about it wouldn’t make the problem go away. He just had to learn how to control it better. Maybe… maybe masturbating more frequently would help? 

“Yeah right,” Adrien said to his dick, which was straining against the waistband of his jeans and starting to feel really uncomfortable. “I don’t know. I don’t like this…” 

Jacking off would be quicker than hopping into the shower for a cold rinse, though, and he needed to get back out there ASAP. Who knows what that woman was doing now? Unlike most of the other akumatized villains he had gone up against, her primary objective seemed to require secrecy, which meant that there might be a whole hell of a lot more victims the longer this went on. He briefly remembered the bodies in the alley in which he had first spotted her, and cringed. 

“Well, that’s helpful,” he said aloud to nobody, least of all his painfully tight penis. “Nothing like a bunch of dudes tied up on the ground with their dicks out to get me all hot and bothered.” 

There was a small exclamation of either disgust or shock from the cheese cupboard, and Adrien, flustered even more than he already was, said, “Sorry Plagg, go back to your feast.” There was no reply. 

He felt very sorry for the men Mother had made victims, but he had to jack off. So he kicked off his shoes, settled against the pillows, and wriggled his jeans down his hips. The eye of his dick was wet, and the head was purple, tinged with blue. It looked more severe than it felt… though that was still not super great. Adrien had never experienced this kind of weirdly unpleasant need before. He didn’t even feel like he had words to describe it. It was sort of like an insistent pressure building, low in his stomach, and all he knew was that he had to relieve it. 

There was a bottle of lotion he kept in the bedside drawer, along with an absorbent handkerchief that had seen many a night on the inside of the washing-machine. It was better than the mound of tissues Nino left for his mother to clean up, Adrien thought, or the dirty socks Kim swore by. 

Pumping a small amount of almond lotion in his hand, he carefully grasped himself by the shaft, neatly covering the head with the reusable handkerchief. As soon as he touched himself he groaned, breath hissing out through clenched teeth; his dick was hard and hot and he could feel it throb, both against his hand and of himself. Most of the time he paid less attention to his cock than to nearly anything else, so he was struck by how good it felt to slowly, teasingly stroke his finger along one vein. 

For a minute he edged himself, not knowing what else to do, only trying and responding to what felt good, great, incredible. How did he not do this more often? He didn’t even have anything in mind, he just went for it, and soon he was jacking his dick at an increasingly fevered pace. Adrien’s eyes were screwed shut, and his handkerchief was chafing, so he tossed it aside and swiped a slippery thumb across the tip-slit, and nearly gasped when a rush of pleasure to his loins rewarded the simple action. 

He chased the pleasure by using his left hand to abuse the head of his cock: rolling his palm against it, tickling it with tantalizingly soft fingers. His balls were beginning to feel tight now, and he absentmindedly grabbed at them, squeezing them and for a delicious second pushing himself almost, nearly over the edge, but he didn’t want it to be over yet, so his right hand instead wandered up his hip and chest, under his shirt, sensually pinching and pulling at his flesh along the way. He placed his index finger over one erect nipple and flicked it, welcoming an intoxicating wave of excitement that rolled down his body like a boom of thunder, ending in his lap, where the eye of his cock wept with joy.

“Ugh, nearly, nearly,” Adrien groaned out, panting. He had never felt so frenzied, so out of control, pumping his dick and thrusting his hips for ever-increasing pulses of pleasure, fondling his right pec desperately and delighting in the anticipation, the closeness, of orgasm. His whole body seemed to narrow to the length of his cock. It was the only thing that mattered in the entire world. 

While he was solely focused on his singular task, thinking of nothing but the eventual supernova of ecstasy that awaited him at the end of this already incredibly divine, gratifying journey, he opened his eyes (possibly because they were going to roll back into his head) and was confronted by a lifesize cardboard cutout of Ladybug that he had glued to the ceiling some weeks previously. 

Her lifelike eyes glimmered in the dimness. She was watching him. 

“L-Ladybug!” Adrien gasped. The boiling pressure in his balls skyrocketed, and a few more drops of precum squirted onto his shirt. He didn’t stop bucking his hips; if anything, his pace picked up even faster than before, and he added a twisting motion as his hand reached the topmost part of his shaft that gave him a dizzying burst of painful rapture. 

He stared into the endless blue gaze of the love of his life, twenty feet above him in all of her cardboard glory. The standee had really captured her quite well: she was standing with her long legs wide apart, her lithe body cutting an imposing, but approachable, figure. She was reaching out an arm as if to offer to take him away, and her smile was easy and bright, complementing the warmth in her eyes. He had added some glitter to her cheeks and irises so that her face sparkled and he could imagine she was looking after him when he was in bed. 

He’d used it to masturbate before, of course, though always a little guiltily. Those past times, however, didn’t even hold a candle to what he was feeling at the moment.

“Ggh,” Adrien grunted, “Nnn!” The dam was about to break, and he both desperately needed and dreaded the flood.

Staring up at his idol with pleading, acute urgency, heat and shame in his eyes and his penis deepest red, wet with perspiration and the drippings of his own precum, Adrien cried out as he had never cried out before. This was it, the briefest and longest seconds of pure, selfish joy he would ever experience…! 

He arched his hips, giving one last, deliciously slow thrust, squeezing his fist around his dick as he pushed to the apex of apoplectic euphoria--

Nothing happened. 

Adrien was tensed, poised over the ascent to bliss, waiting for what he was sure was going to be the orgasm to end all orgasms. 

He didn’t feel any differently. His penis was still throbbing, leaking, craving touch. It was hot and hard and heavy on his stomach, aimed directly at his face and upper chest. His hand was still gripping himself tightly, and he gave an experimental, soft stroke that wrung a needy whine from his throat. His level of arousal wasn’t the problem. What was going on? 

Confused, and beyond frustrated in multiple senses of the word now, Adrien fondled himself for a few more minutes, each pinch and caress adding to his growing want. But when he tried, again and again, to bring about an orgasm, something was stopping him from finishing. He was left with a purple dick and engorged balls and a sex flush that spread from the top of his head to the tips of his toes. If he was hot and bothered before, now he was boiling and hysterical. 

“What in the...what,” he kept mumbling over and over, voice growing louder as he throttled his dick. “What is happening!” 

But he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t come. No matter what he did with his hands, or his pillow, or tissues, or even a dirty sock that was in the hamper, nothing helped. He didn’t have any other toys, but he suspected that they wouldn’t be of any use either. After what seemed to be an eternity of trying to come, something finally hit him. 

“Plagg!” Adrien yelled, in a much more frenzied tone than he thought would come out of his mouth. 

The door to the cheese cupboard banged open, and Plagg careened out, eyes wide and tail twitching with distress. “What? What?” 

“Plagg! Mother, she-- she cast some sort of weird sex magic on me and I… I can’t do anything about it! Has this ever happened before?” 

“Oh, kid,” the kwami said, retreating to the cupboard and slumping against a mound of cheese. “You’re definitely gonna give me a heart attack one of these days. Also, put that thing away, please. Human genitalia is so gross, it makes me lose my appetite.” 

Adrien gave him a murderous glare, but attempted to stick his dick back into his pants. It was so swollen and immovable that when he tucked his shirt in it stuck out over the waistband of his jeans, leaving a suspicious lump like a protruding belly button. Adrien sat up. 

“What the heck am I going to do? It’s been like twenty minutes. Chat Noir has to get back out there! Have there been any return calls from Ladybug?” 

“One question at a time, kid.” Plagg rubbed his tail tiredly over his eyes. “No calls, but that’s no surprise. You’ll have to keep trying. As for what’s going on here… well, I was afraid that this might be the case. Again.”

Adrien swallowed nervously. “What? Again?” 

Plagg lazily looked over his cache of camembert, contemplating the next bite. “Maybe thirty years ago, that generation of Chat Noir encountered a villain who used a similar attack method. I think he called himself… Mont Blanc? I thought it was a funny name. Anyway, he got close to Chat and Chat had an… what’s it called, something stupid.” 

The kwami paused, muttering, until Adrien supplied in a quiet, strained voice, “An erection?”

Plagg slapped his leg (in lieu of snapping his fingers, which he did not have) and pointed at his charge. “Yes. I can never remember the term. So, Chat had an erection for over twelve hours--” 

“Twelve hours!” Adrien gasped. His own erection was pretty painful already, nevermind what it would be like in twelve frickin’ hours. He could barely pay attention to Plagg’s explanation as it was, because his hand kept straying to the tip of his dick and playing with it, if only to relieve some of the pressure. He was quickly learning that it was only making him more horny, so he was trying to live with the discomfort. 

“Lemme finish. Yeah, twelve hours, and it only went away when he and Ladybug defeated the villain. God, what a horrible day. Like a gallon of semen--”

“Stop, stop. I get it. Okay, so what you’re saying is, I have a magic, evil boner, and the only way to get rid of it is to get rid of Mother. Ugh, what a horrible code name! But calling her Mme. Dupain-Cheng would be even more terrible. And, oh my god, poor Marinette! I can never tell her about this. God, I have to either forget about this (BIG if) or take it to my grave.” Adrien ran his hands through his hair, biting his lower lip so hard that it almost called his attention away from the front of his pants. 

The kwami shook his head at his ward’s babbling. “If it makes you feel any better, her full villain name is ‘Mother Hood.’ That’s kind of fun, right? She wears a hood as part of her costume, and she’s a mom!” 

Adrien stared at Plagg. “That… doesn’t really help. And how do you know that? Wait, how do you know that and I don’t?”

“It’s complicated, but--” 

“Nevermind! We have to get going. I’m really sorry man, but I have to retransform. I’ll try my best not to… ruin the suit, but… you made it sound as if that was inevitable.” 

Plagg nodded, making a face. “It is, unless you miraculously take it off in time. But I’ll tell you what; I’ll forgive you if you stock up the cheese vault. I want three cubic feet of cheese that I can drown my sorrows in later.” 

“You got it.” Adrien nodded, then thought of something and cringed. He began looking around his room, digging things out of his closet, drawers, and hamper until finally he came up with a dark, grey-on-black plaid skirt that he had accidentally taken home from one of the fashion shoots he had done last week. 

The kwami looked up with interest as Adrien came back over to the side of the bed. “What’s that for?” 

“To hide my shame,” the boy answered cheerlessly, placing the skirt on the bed and smoothing it out. Hopefully his Lady wouldn’t call too much attention to it. He’d worn other stuff over his costume before and at most she’d called his style cute. He wondered if she’d like him in a skirt, and the thought made his dick twinge with a thrill. He had to stop thinking about things like that. He had to stop thinking, period. “Plagg, claws out!” 

***

Marinette woke with a start, something high-pitched and anxious calling quietly in her ear, “Wake up, wake up!”

“Hmm? Tikki?” She rubbed her eyes and blinked at the light from her alarm clock. It was 9:30 pm. They’d barely been asleep for an hour. “What is it?” 

“Two calls from Chat! The second one sounds very urgent.” 

Tikki transformed into a polka-dotted compact and Marinette blearily opened it, yawning as she did so. However, when she heard the frantic panic in Chat’s tone, she suddenly felt very awake. 

“Ladybug! I don’t have much time. A powerful villain is here, and I think she’s a little more than I can handle at the moment. I’m sorry to disturb you on your day off, but the villain is the mother of a very dear friend of mine, so I could use your help. Please, my Lady, please hurry.” 

Marinette closed the compact with a snap, and Tikki unfolded, popping back into existence, worry abundantly clear in her huge blue eyes. 

“He’s talking about Maman,” Marinette whispered, and fear and guilt warred with each other in her stomach, causing nausea to rise as bile in her throat. “Oh my god. I didn’t know, I didn’t want to believe…when did he call?” 

Tikki laid her head on Marinette’s hand, patting it softly as her Lady’s fingers curled into a fist. “The second one came in around forty minutes ago, but I was asleep. I’m truly sorry, Marinette. I’m not going to force you, but you have to make a choice. Take your time.” 

“We don’t have time.” Marinette scooped Tikki up and placed her on her shoulder. “I just need to double-check that she isn’t with Papa in their bedroom, and then we’ll go.” 

“Okay.” 

Marinette didn’t have much practice sneaking down the stairs at night, and she wasn’t about to compensate for her natural clumsiness now. She moved as quickly and quietly as she could, but the ladder down to the top floor still creaked, and she stubbed her toe while dashing around a corner, but she ignored the injury and in less than a minute she was in front of the master bedroom door. 

There was no light underneath it, which meant that her father was either asleep or down in the bakery. Or he could’ve gone out on his own in search of Sabine. At this time of night, anything was possible. Still, Marinette told herself to slow down as she turned the handle of the door and eased it open. 

The glow from the streetlamps washed the room in watery gold, the divided shadows of the window panes laying bars across the large, plush bed, which was made up impeccably by someone skilled in the domestic arts. No one was in it, sleeping or otherwise. Marinette sucked in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Damn.” 

“Language, girl.” 

This time the breath Marinette inhaled was so quick and shallow it made her choke. She swung her gaze to a pitch-black corner where the wardrobe stood, proud cherry oak that darkly hid anyone cunning enough to use it as a cover. A figure was loitering there, idly examining her nails, but Marinette could not see her very well. Her eyes were still adjusting. 

“Be a dear and call your father in, would you? I’m getting tired of waiting, and I want to try the delicacies you have so prettily advertised on your storefront.” 

Despite her subtly flirtatious words, the woman’s inflection was so cold that it made the hairs on the back of Marinette’s neck stand up. And a realization struck her so suddenly that it made her whole body break out in goosebumps. She knew the voice beneath the ice. She’d heard it since birth, and even a little before. It was trapped under so many layers, but it was there. 

“Mother…” 

The villain snapped, “Child! Fetch your Papa! I’ll not tolerate your slow wits a second longer!” She stepped into a square of light, winding a frosty chain between her hands. 

Marinette gaped. She was frozen by the harsh verbal lashes, and further by the sight of her mother’s naked misery. “Maman… what happened to you?” 

Of course, she knew what had happened. HawkMoth had driven his poisonous dagger, dripping with venom, into her mother’s ear. Power had changed her, corrupted her. Marinette was beginning to see just how much Sabine had been hiding from her, and from Tom, during the long, lonely months they had been arguing. The warm, caring mother Marinette knew, akumatized into this hideous monster, was unbearable to behold. And her outfit was far too stripped down and scandalous. Had she been out in public wearing that? Oh, god. Marinette had seen some scanty lingerie, but this was beyond belief. 

“I’m finally free to do whatever I wish, and what I wish is for the fine specimen of your father. Bring him to me, child. I tire of searching for the Holy Grail. But you know where he is!”

Marinette did not know where Tom was. And why was Maman enlisting help from her? With Sabine in this state, they weren’t allies. Marinette couldn’t even be completely sure that she knew who she was, and what they meant to each other. But maybe, on a subconscious level, Sabine was crying out for help. Begging for a return to her former self. That’s why she had returned home. That’s why she… but wait. No. What was her real goal? 

Marinette needed to transform into Ladybug. And she needed to call Chat here, immediately. 

“Um…” Even now, she found she could not lie to her mother, so she settled for a half-truth. “I’m going to step out for a minute. Be right back!”

Before Sabine could say anything, Marinette had closed the bedroom door with a snap, and turned to Tikki. At once, they nodded to each other; but when Marinette began to say the magic words to transform, the little kwami pressed her body against her Lady’s lips in warning. 

“Go to the roof and do it from there, otherwise she and HawkMoth will suspect something,” Tikki whispered. 

“Good idea, but also we don’t have time for that!” Marinette said under her breath. 

“Please, Marinette, it’s very important that--” 

“Fine.” It was useless to argue, and it was better to be cautious. If HawkMoth found out who she really was, everything was over. 

She dashed up the stairs and was about to throw open the hatch to the balcony when Tikki stayed her hand. Marinette gave her a pointed look and was about to open her mouth to complain, but the kwami frowned and shook her head, indicating the trapdoor. “Listen!” 

There were quiet, hesitant footsteps on the roof. 

Marinette’s annoyance gave way to anxiety, and she shared a glance with Tikki. “Can you tell who that is?” 

“It might be Chat, but something’s… off.” 

“Okay, even if it isn’t him, I have to transform like… five minutes ago.” Marinette took a quick assessment of her room. “Under the desk. The light won’t be as noticeable.” 

Tikki nodded, and the two picked their way as quickly and quietly as they could to Marinette’s desk, where she transformed. 

Now feeling newly refreshed and powerful, nerves subdued, Ladybug cautiously opened the roof’s hatch and peeked out. 

A pair of black boots, inches from her eyes, turned sharply towards her. She saw the fluid movement of legs come down in a crouch, of claw-tipped gloves placed carefully on cement. Then a luminous green gaze, the same one she had been mesmerized by earlier that night, caught her sneaking. 

“My Lady?” The voice came out curiously low and strained. 

“Chat, thank god. I didn’t know if you’d escaped or not,” Ladybug answered in an equally quiet tone. She opened the trapdoor a little bit wider and motioned to him. “Come on, she’s inside the house.”

He normally wasn’t one to ask questions, or to hesitate when given orders, but alarmingly, he did both. “H-how are you here? You didn’t return my calls? Where’s my-- Marinette? I forget, you know Marinette, right?” 

Ladybug grabbed at his wrist to pull him in, but he snatched it away as if her touch burned. She frowned at him. Tikki had said something before, about how his movements hadn’t sounded like himself. And as she studied him, she found that he didn’t look much like himself either. Pupils blown wide, hair matted and normally tanned face pink and slick with sweat, plus a tiny tremor that made his body shake even when he was seemingly holding still. And… a plaid skirt hugging his waist? It was cute, but it didn’t make sense. 

“What’s wrong, Chat?” She held up her hand to his forehead, but again he jerked back, avoiding the contact as if it might electrocute him. “You… don’t look well.” 

Chat trilled, a high-pitched giggle that made his shivering even more noticeable, even after he stopped laughing. “No! No, no no, I’m fine! I can do this! Let’s go get her.” 

There was definitely something wrong with him. Maybe it was a reaction to battling with the villain earlier? If so, what the hell was she setting herself up to deal with? That cold woman was persistently pressing on the back of Ladybug’s skull, taunting her with the chilled refrain of ‘child, child.’ However, if Chat wanted to pretend that he wasn’t hiding anything… she didn’t want to pry. After all, they both had to keep their secrets. The sooner this was over, the sooner everything would be okay. 

She propped the hatch open for him and dropped down into the bedroom. Chat followed, landing with a heavier thud than she thought he normally would, and they both winced. 

In dimmer lighting he didn’t look any better. In fact, he seemed to be deteriorating with every step he took. Ladybug sized him up. “What’s with the skirt?” 

Chat gulped, and twisted to show off his new accessory, hands on hips. “You like it?”

“I… guess? It’s nice.” 

Chat twirled, then lost his balance and hopped on one foot, straight towards the chaise lounge. Ladybug caught him by the arm before they both flipped over the furniture. This time Chat did not refuse her help; in fact, quite the opposite. He grasped her wrist with his free hand and spun into her space in a parody of an embrace: her right arm wrapped around his shoulders and her chest pressed against his ribcage. He settled his nose into her hair and breathed deeply. She could feel the expansion of his lungs, the hard hammering of his heart. He smelled unclean, like grimy salt and something deeper she couldn’t identify. A warm thing jutted at her hip, underneath his skirt. Chat’s baton? But why did it feel wet? 

Normally she would be somewhat bemused by his antics, but now she was unsettled. He usually wasn’t this forward. 

“Mmmmy Lady,” Chat sighed, and brought a hand to rest at her waist. He seemed more relaxed. 

Ladybug forced a laugh and gently removed his hand from her body. “What are you doing, you crazy cat? We have to go.” She untangled herself from the weird hug, and went for the door, leaving Chat near the chaise. 

“Wait, my Lady, wait!” he cried, and she turned towards him, holding a finger to her lips. 

“Shh. We don’t want to give away our position.” 

He slapped a hand over his mouth, tugging the hem of his skirt down. “Sorry,” he said in a stage whisper, and crept over to the door, standing a little further away from her than he normally would. His trembling had returned, and she could see sweat starting to collect at his collar, sliding over the latex enclosing his neck. Even his little bell had beads of perspiration on it, and she brushed off the tiny shower of droplets that hit her costume every time he made a sudden movement. 

“Come on,” Ladybug urged, drawing open the door and stepping with light feet down the stairs. “I told Marinette to go to a friend’s house, and I don’t think her father is home. But the villain is here. I can feel her.” It was true; even though she already knew where Mother was, a strange awareness, almost like a sixth sense, was guiding her towards the master bedroom. 

“You’ve felt her? Mother Hood?” Chat’s voice dropped back down to a low, hoarse murmur, but there was a bizarre undercurrent of delight to his tone. With every word he seemed to press closer and closer into her personal space, until he was practically humming in her ear. The heat from his body bore down on her back. “Actually, um, she’s like, ninety percent of the reason why I’m in such bad shape right now,” he confessed. 

“I thought as much,” she said, then paused at the kitchen counter, deftly sliding forward when he bumped into her from behind. His baton poked her again. She had a fleeting, distracting thought that it was too warm. “Wait, did you say her code name is ‘Mother Hood’?” 

Chat giggled deliriously. “Pretty funny, right?”

“Um… not really.” 

He sobered for a second. “You’re right. I’m sorry.” 

Ladybug waved his apology away, and they kept moving, tiptoeing to the master bedroom’s door. 

Just before they entered, Ladybug turned to Chat and said, “It’s cramped in there, and it looks like she has a long-range weapon, so it should be fairly easy to grab her and rip the akuma out. Any ideas where it could be hiding?”

Chat smiled, then pursed his lips together in a neutral, tight line. “She’s not wearing much. My guess, go for the parka. It’s in her frickin’ name.” 

Ladybug nodded, and stopped herself from commenting that Sabine owned a similar, larger version of the garment. She also tried to refrain from thinking about Chat having seen Sabine like this, and wanted to assure him that she was the most wonderful maman in the world. They’d met before, he knew she was a very good person! She wasn’t like this. She’d never have cause to act like this if it weren’t for HawkMoth. But Ladybug wasn’t supposed to know anything about Sabine. Chat was smart enough to draw his own conclusions. Although, seeing as how he was so obviously off his game after fighting Mother once, she wondered if this altercation would forever change the way their relationship stood. And, along that line of thought... 

The heroine exhaled, collecting herself and pushing any potential worries out of her mind. All that mattered now was freeing Mother, and purifying the akuma. “Of course. Okay. This is fine.” 

Chat looked at her askance, hand on the knob, ready to leap into action. “You alright, my Lady?”

“Silly kitty.” Ladybug smiled wider than she meant to, and placed her fingers over his, pushing down on the handle. “Let’s do this!”

***

Every movement, every touch, everything she said and the things she didn’t say, all of it made his head pound and his heart pump and his dick hurt with a longing that he hadn’t felt in all of his 15 years. It was taking all, and even more, of his strength not to push up against any part of her body and rub his penis on it until he bled and/or erupted in cum. He was eternally grateful that, for all of her bluntness, for all of the times she reprimanded his advances, she always turned him away so softly. Her little hands, so delicate but so clever, gently rebuffing him, touching him, sending the heartbeat in his chest and his dick racing. She hadn’t said a word, just stepped back, and she might’ve given him a worried once-over and he loved her for it. It meant that he could try again. And he desperately needed to try again. He wanted her so badly that he could hardly think of anything else, and it was getting worse the closer the two heroes came to Mother. But he was still lucid. He was in control. 

This was what it meant to be so in love with someone that, even if you were under an evil magic cock curse, you tried your best to listen and respect what that person had to say. Even if it was really, really hard. 

He had gotten distracted a few times and pressed into her without thinking, soliciting pleasure that was so good it was painful; in Marinette’s bedroom he was sure he had given the game away, knowing precum was spilling out as freely as a fountain gives water when he nudged against the flesh of Ladybug’s thigh. Chat’s arousal had reached a crescendo that he couldn’t complete, so he was stuck reliving a delicious, torturous loop of stimulation that was so heightened by Ladybug’s nearness (her smell, her hair and eyes and oh god her body) it was a wonder he hadn’t already ejaculated so much that his suit turned white. 

And he had known she was going to stop at the kitchen counter even before she did so; he could read her movements with perfect clarity after years of practice and keeping, if he were honest, way too close an eye on her while they were running out and about. Despite accurately predicting that she was going to halt in that instance and ask him a question, he still pressed forward and brought his dick up against the cleft in her backside, and his eyelids had fluttered for a second as he imagined the plushness of her ass taking the heft of his cock. Heaven wouldn’t be a big enough concept to describe it as the thought reamed through his mind. Primordial, oozing, unending chaos; the zenith of creation; nerves on fire, soul a bright shooting star launched to the outer extremities of the ever-expanding cosmos. Chat would die and he would love her forever.

Then she had moved away, and asked her question, and his split-second high crashed to Earth and he was reminded of the simple, awful blue balls he had been suffering from for, at most, half an hour. There were more important things at stake than his penis, he knew that. As aware of that fact as he was, though, it didn’t do much to dissuade his stupid reptile hindbrain from urging him to grab Ladybug by the face and ram his thing down her throat. At least his human common sense and decency were still in the driver’s seat. 

When she had enclosed her hand over his so that they could open the door together, he had almost pulled her into a kiss. But Ladybug, ever the professional, had faced forward to sweep the room for their current enemy. 

“Ah, not the man I wanted, but I’ve been waiting for you, kitten. What do you say to a round two?” Mother was on the bed, legs spread wide. Rather contrary to her seductive words, the set of her jaw was rigid and her dull, filmy eyes stared ahead with cold contempt. 

A shockwave of arousal surprised Chat. His torment had plateaued for a while, so the intensity of the pleasurable burst overwhelmed him. He groaned and fell to his knees, hands scrabbling at the waistband of his skirt, pawing desperately at the head of his cock. Ladybug was at his side in an instant. 

“Chat Noir!” 

He couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe. If she touched him, he would explode. Covering himself and grasping at the threads of his rapidly unraveling presence of mind to say what he said next took almost all of the one brain cell left in his head. “Vulnerable! While she has me, you get her!” 

Ladybug looked pained, but she stood up and deployed her yoyo to seize the villainess. Mother Hood matched the movement with a chain, and both dodged out of the way of the other’s attack. The wicked woman rolled off the side of the duvet and landed on her feet; Ladybug used her yoyo, which had caught on a post, to quick-pull herself across the room, sliding over the sheets of the bed and in front of Mother Hood. 

“Stop this! You have a family who would do anything for you!” Ladybug grabbed Mother by the shoulders, and Chat could see tears in her eyes as frost bloomed on her gloves. He loved her. He loved her so much. 

“Do not presume to know me or my family, brat.” The woman crushed Ladybug’s wrists in her grip. “I only wanted to grow our love. I only wanted to add to our happiness, but my husband refused to comply with my wishes. Now he will obey me, and I will have the child I desire.” 

Mother Hood punctured a canister at her hip, and white liquid spurted out, staining both her skin and Ladybug’s suit. A horrible, acrid odor filled the room, and Ladybug wrenched out of the villain’s grasp, reeling back. “Sabine! I know this isn’t what you want to hear, and it isn’t really my place to say anything, but what you have right now is enough! You have to make your peace with that! If you force your husband to do this, it will tear your family apart! And then you will have no one!” 

“Shut up! Shut up, you stupid girl!” The villain flung strings of the white ooze at Ladybug’s face, perhaps intending to blind her, but the heroine blocked the attack, crossing her arms over her head. Thick drippings of white ran to her elbows, and as she lowered her guard her expression transformed. Gone were the salty tracks of tears; now her eyes were not limned red with sadness, but with pity and understanding. 

Chat found that he could move again. He stood, his lust abated but still very present. He clutched his cock, making no effort to hide the carnal pressure slowly crushing him. 

“My lady, let’s end this,” he said with a growl, and Ladybug nodded, not looking at him. He was simultaneously glad and angered that she only had eyes for Mother. Glad that she didn’t know what was tearing through his mind right now. Angry because he wanted to see what she would do if she did know. He wanted to take her by the waist and spin her, shove his dick in between her thighs, bite her throat until she cried. 

Why was she so concerned for this villainess, this evil person, when her attention should be on him? 

Chat took a step forward, and Mother Hood, sensing his recovery, took a step back. “Let’s not be so hasty, children. Why, both of you could--” 

“Enough!” Chat roared, and he charged, cataclysm forming with dark energy in his palm. Mother Hood produced a chain, but the hero was too fast and too close for her to use it effectively. As the woman made a move to run, Ladybug whipped out her yoyo to wrap around Mother’s ankles, trapping her in place while Chat closed in. 

“Now!” 

“ARGH!” 

Chat seized hold of the powder blue hood that had fallen against Mother Hood’s back, and with a snarl ripped it right through. The parka disintegrated, and HawkMoth’s aura melted away. Mme. Dupain-Cheng crumpled to the floor, exhausted.

The dark-winged akuma fluttered, suspended in the air. 

Ladybug’s voice rang out, triumphant, “Time to--”  
And then, as though drawn by an invisible beacon, the akuma approached Chat Noir’s bell, and sealed itself inside. 

***

HawkMoth barely had time to exclaim his defeat when he was presented with a delectable new vessel, one who was more than willing to work with him. There was something so familiar about the negative emotions engulfing this body, so deeply etched and powerful that they could hardly be contained; HawkMoth didn’t have to add any more strife to this poor, overwhelmed soul. He just had to extend his offer, and even before the words left his mouth, he knew he would be accepted. 

Never before had he felt such strength, such abandon, so much hate and loneliness and eagerness to prove worthy. He had finally found his perfect puppet, the one would wrest control of the ultimate Miraculouses and deliver unto him his deepest desire. Ironic, that it would be him. Yet, perhaps, HawkMoth should’ve known that this would be the solution all along. 

Momentarily taken aback by the transfer and the rush of new, dark vehemence, HawkMoth paused before addressing his plaything. There was something in the mix he had never felt before with any of his other pawns, and the connection was so strong that it seemed as if the link was choking on feedback. And, as if to compensate for the overspill, that feedback was flowing directly into him. It pooled, first in his mind, before waterfalling into his gut, settling there and heating him like a furnace on fire. HawkMoth bit his glove, groaning. Then he remembered he was supposed to be instructing his instrument, so he cleared his throat and began his usual spiel, fisting his hand against his lower belly in an attempt to calm down. 

“Chat Blanc, I am HawkMoth.” 

“I know who you are. I know what you want.” 

“Oh?” This shouldn’t have been a surprise, but he was distracted and suddenly it was getting hard to think straight. Blood was starting to migrate where he did not want it to migrate. “Then you should have no trouble collecting on my behalf.” 

“With pleasure, HawkMoth.” 

The boy’s voice was low but light, tinged with a sweetness so saccharine it set HawkMoth’s teeth on edge. And he knew, from the moment he heard it, that this was a battle he was not going to win. But neither was Ladybug. 

***

Chat had never felt so free. He’d never felt so unburdened by his feelings, by his body: his wants, needs, and deeper desires that he never, never entertained were all so distant from him now. He could cup them in his hands and let them fall to the ground. All that mattered was that he was here, and Ladybug was there, and they could do whatever they wanted without anyone ever stopping them and telling them that they couldn’t. Because they could. They were superheroes and no one was more powerful than they were. No one could tell them no. No one could tell him no. He. Was. Free. 

“Ch-Chat… Noir?”

He craned his neck backward, a Cheshire grin splitting his face from ear-to-ear as he drunk in the sight of Ladybug against the wall. One of her hands was on the door, and she was worrying the fingertips of her glove in her mouth. Her eyes were large and piercing, beautiful in the watery gold light from the streetlamps outside. He turned around, ignoring Sabine’s resting form on the floor as he stepped closer to the heroine. 

Ladybug gasped, and covered her face. Pink spots blossomed on her cheeks. She was darling, he thought. 

“My Lady, I am Chat Blanc.” He bowed from the waist, and only then did he realize that the outline of his dick was visible, thick against the thigh of his white latex pants. The lust that had accrued during his time fighting Mother Hood had not been paid. In fact, it seemed to have only swelled since his transformation into a higher form of being. 

“H-HawkMoth is controlling you. You have to fight it!”

Chat giggled. She was so cute, hiding like this, almost as if she were embarrassed. Didn’t she want to see him? Didn’t she want to… please him? 

He took her gently by the wrists and lowered her hands, bringing them down near his waist. She inhaled when her fingers brushed his length, and his eyes narrowed in ecstasy as her touch made his skin warm. “There’s no one to fight here, my Lady. It’s just you, and me, and this conveniently king-sized bed.” 

Ladybug’s gaze flicked to the bed, then back to his face, searching his eyes. She was trembling, as he had been, at the start. Now he felt extremely calm. He guided Ladybug’s fingers up and down his cock over the white latex, and he smiled when her breathing quickened. 

“Chat, what’re you--” 

“Come,” he said, easily working his hand between her waist and the wall, planting his palm on the small of her back and pushing her towards the center of the room. She faltered, unsteady, but when his hand slipped down the curve of her ass she squeaked and climbed onto the covers. Chat admired her on her hands and knees as she crawled to the headboard. He followed her. 

HawkMoth’s voice, tinny in his mind, screamed, “Grab the Miraculous and go!” but he sounded so far away that Chat was able to shut him out entirely, focusing solely on the perfect, lithe body of the only girl he was sure he was ever going to love, sitting ramrod straight at the head of the bed. She was watching him closely, and he was reminded of his attempt, just an hour before, to masturbate to her cardboard cutout. His cock jumped and throbbed. This was going to be so much better. 

“Chat Blanc,” Ladybug murmured, rearranging herself into a more relaxed pose, leaning back and letting her legs fall open. He would’ve stopped and stared if he hadn’t already been so intent on prying her thighs apart himself. As it was, he reached her in half a second and sat up on his knees. Half-lidded eyes raked over her body, preparing his hands to do the same. She looked up at him under lowered lashes, and his scrutiny made her quiver. Chat noticed her fingers fisting in the duvet. 

“There’s no need to be nervous,” he whispered, as she shrunk back. “You’re going to be perfect.” 

He lunged forward, burying his face in her hair. His left hand caressed her breast, while his right slid over her thighs. A startled little “Oh!” warmed his cheek, her breath sweet with chocolate notes. Lovely. Heavenly. 

“Chat...Blanc…” she gasped between breaths as he nipped at her neck, canines digging into the magical latex that secured her throat. He couldn’t puncture it, and a drop of displeasure was flung onto the mountain of his emotions, far, far away. Instead he bit her jaw, and at her jolt of surprise and yelp of pain peppered kisses from underneath her ear to her lips, which he avoided in favor of marking the same path on the other side of her face. He didn’t want to kiss her cupid’s bow, not yet; he was savoring the less-attended parts of courtship. 

She was divine in all ways: the peach fuzz that blanketed her sweet-smelling skin, the hollow of her throat which enticed him every time she craned her neck skyward. The black, dark lashes fluttering against his cheek as he roved over her, kissing every square inch, like she deserved. She had sucked in her bottom lip and he could see the points of her teeth, sharp and white. Her hands were still on the bed, not on him, and when he realized this a passing bolt of anger surged through him and away. 

Chat took her hand to press her palm on his hip, but she let it fall back to the blankets, and when he tried again it fell again, until he growled and she looked up at him, all innocence and freshness, and defiance. He loved it. 

“You’re beautiful,” he said, licking the shell of her ear. 

“Thanks,” she returned, squirming under him. “You’re cute.” The words went straight to his dick. 

Working on her level of arousal, however, was another story. Pawing her breasts wasn’t really getting him, or her, anywhere, and the same seemed to be true of wherever else he tried to elicit a reaction on her body. The damn magical latex was screening her from him, creating a barrier he had never wanted gone more intensely in his life. Chat tried tearing it apart with his teeth, with his claws, and was about to begin gathering the energy for a catastrophic spirit bomb when she gently closed his fist, and cupped his face with tentative fingers. 

“We can’t.” 

He stared at her. There was a gentle firmness to her expression, a softness belied by something underneath, something dark in her eyes. He traced the outline of her mask with a claw. She lowered her hand, let it fall. 

“We can. This is all I’ve ever wanted, my Love.” 

The confession drew a pinch of irritation from her brow. “This is all? All I mean to you? Sex?” 

“No!” He was quick to reassure her. A little too quick, and insistent. “You mean absolutely everything to me. I, I can’t even put into words how much I love you. It’s just that, tonight, this moment, I want nothing but this. It’s something I’ve imagined so much that it feels more like a memory. But this is the first time it’s really happening. I know what it’s going to be like.”

It was her turn to stare, and the darkness in her gaze hardened. Chat Blanc ignored it. 

“What’s it going to be like, Chat?” 

“Perfect, my Love. I told you at the beginning.” 

Ladybug sighed, and the tension went out of her shoulders. When she opened her eyes again, the darkness had drained, and starlight was there. “I don’t think this will work very well with your cataclysm. What if I use my Lucky Charm instead?”

“Excellent suggestion, my Darling,” he eagerly agreed. 

She spoke the magic words with Chat cradled in her lap, watching the yoyo swing into the air. A little foil packet popped into existence, and landed squarely in her hand. Ladybug took one look at it and her cheeks were pink again. She seemed to shake her head a bit before saying, “A condom? H-how…?” 

Chat Blanc beamed, nuzzling against her chest. He could feel the electric beats of her heart, and it stirred his cock. “It’s almost as if the universe wants us to make love!”

Ladybug’s eyes were darting quickly about the room, before finally settling on the thick outline of his penis. She was frowning, putting together the pieces of the puzzle. He watched her hungrily. “There isn’t any way to remove our suits, so I suppose… I suppose…” She trailed off, gaze slowly locking onto his, and he smiled widely. 

“I don’t mind. I already knew I was going to cream in this suit, so.” He shrugged. “It doesn’t bother me.”  
For some reason she looked shocked. “Won’t your… nevermind,” she said as she waved her hands to banish the thought. Then she ripped open the packet, peeling the polka-dotted condom out. “Geez. Never thought I’d have to use this. At least, not during a mission.” 

Chat Blanc was ready. He had never been more ready. “My Lady,” he began, voice as soft as silk, dripping with honey. “It would be an honor if you would deign to ride me until I cum.” He took the hand still holding the condom and brought it to his lips, kissing her knuckles. Ladybug looked down at him, but her expression told him that she was far away. He wanted her to come back. 

So he sat up, sliding his hand beneath her back, lifting her with ease. She startled, then moved aside as he settled against the headboard, laying his body out for her. His Lady’s gaze swept over him, blinking at his still hard cock. It was covered but it stood out amongst all of his other features, as if it had been cast in resin. She glanced at the condom in her hand, then curled her fist around it. “Okay.” 

Tears blurred his vision as she straddled him, hesitantly placing hands on his chest. The weight felt good, right. Perfect. She hadn’t kissed him yet, hadn’t really reacted beyond shallow breaths as he had licked and laved her, but he thought it was just a matter of time, of what she felt like doing. Chat turned his face expectantly to her hips, which were hovering above his waist. Her thigh was just brushing against the tip, and it was maddening that she was holding so still. Such an expert at teasing him. The pressure in his balls, indeed, along the whole length of his penis, had been shoved onto a backburner of his mind, but he allowed himself to feel the sensation again, the overwhelming need boiling just beneath the surface of his skin. It was painful, it was powerful. Perfect. 

“Please, my Love,” he begged, thrusting his hips up. Ladybug rose with him, leaning forward to steady herself, and as she did so her leg, and part of her groin, rubbed against his member. He gasped. “Yes!” 

Ladybug’s smile was tight, but she said, “Oh? Was that good?” 

“Yes,” Chat Blanc whimpered. “Yes, you’re so good. Do you see what you’re doing to me? These little touches…” He bucked again, but this time Ladybug pushed down, and Chat moaned. “Oh, fuck.” 

Her smile was twisted. Her eyes were dark. There was a crinkle of foil as she squeezed the wrapper, and she held his hand as she ground her hips on his dick. He wasn’t sure how much she could feel, but even with two layers of latex between them he was already close to blowing his load all over the inside of his suit. Well, he had been close for the past hour, but it was a testament to how much he needed her that she brought him within an inch of his life in a matter of seconds. Just grinding on him! Chat couldn’t imagine how skin-to-skin, dick-in-vagina sex would feel. He would probably die. He would still love her forever.

They kept up a rhythm for a while; he didn’t know if she had ever done this before but she drew increasingly needy moans from his throat, and every time he sought extra friction from her, she delivered by speeding up the tempo of her hips, sliding from the base of his balls to the head of his cock. There was a wet sound that kept pace with them, and he knew it was pre-cum that was running down his leg, into his boots. 

“I’m so close,” he whined under his breath, luxuriating in the feeling of the delicious heat coiling in his balls. “Just...a little...more…”

Ladybug suddenly stopped, staring in alarm where she was sitting on him. “Your… you’re glowing! Chat, are you manifesting your cataclysm right now?” 

He giggled. His dick was on fire. “Sure feels like I’m about to cum, but, maybe that’s just how it is when I’m like this. Please, please don’t stop.” 

She hesitated, but he bucked again and she started moving. Her hands were busy now, not on him, but trying to stretch out the condom. Chat Blanc was barely paying attention, so close to cumming now that he was thrashing, crying, and riding him was like trying to heel a wild bull.

When Ladybug pulled the condom taut over his dick, her little hands fluttering, squeezing him, and that was what he needed. That was what he needed to let go. 

He screamed, and there was a flash of blinding light, of stars exploding behind his eyes. But it wasn’t just his brain that wiped out white; the energy that had been gathering in his balls now exploded out of the tip of his penis, a bright cataclysm that filled the little hollow tip of the condom with pure light. Chat Blanc convulsed, shaking out the remainder of his orgasm until he collapsed against the headboard, spent. 

***

Ladybug had been thrown off of him, onto the floor, the moment he had come. Now, as she held her head, she rose slowly from the floor, wincing at the brilliant glow surrounding Chat Blanc’s cock. She couldn’t look at it, and instead circled the bed to find Mme. Dupain-Cheng curled beneath the window, sleeping peacefully.

A sound made her turn her attention to the bed. Chat snuffled, turning on his side.

She still had to break the akuma out of his bell. She had worried that she wouldn’t be able to, before, when his predatory gaze had been on her at all times. Now that he was dreaming, she could do it safely. 

And she knew, the moment she tossed her lucky charm into the sky, that magic would sweep all of this horrible day away. 

But. 

She would remember.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Hope you enjoyed it!
> 
> I've been thinking about writing a Chat Blanc story for quite a while, actually. I knew I wanted to write one even before the episode was announced, and then when the episode WAS put on the schedule after months of fan speculation, I was extremely motivated to think of a story idea and write it out. 
> 
> I began by researching what white cats were associated with in mythology. We all know black cats symbolize bad luck and magic, but white cats aren't used as often, and I couldn't recall a single time a white cat featured prominently in a story. 
> 
> So of course I turned to the internet, and I found that white cats are symbols of good fortune, purity, and calmness. They were also used by a Norwegian fertility goddess, Freya, to pull her chariot: therefore, white cats are linked with sex and childbirth as well. This was very convenient for me, because I already knew that I wanted my interpretation of Chat Blanc to be an unrepentant sexual predator. He thinks he's doing the right thing, of course, because how could he not, but in the end it's all to serve his sexual obsession with Ladybug. You might've picked up that she wasn't really into it. Well. She wasn't. 
> 
> The seed idea for this story was inspired by the white cat's symbolic tie to sex and childbirth. I almost immediately lit upon Sabine as a vehicle for Chat Blanc's "birth." I've been thinking a lot about mother-child relationships lately, and this is reflected here. In this story, everything about motherhood is turned on its head: a soothing, unerotic caregiver in canon, Sabine is infused with selfish, sexual motivations and becomes a perverse figure that enjoys her newfound power. Released from her human inhibitions as Mother Hood, she rips through Paris's male population, seeking their seed only as a means to fulfill her end-goal of impregnating herself, though she can't deny taking pleasure in dominating them, no matter who they are. I cut out a scene later on in the story that depicted her arguing with HawkMoth about her initial fight with Chat Noir. I felt that it would be a weird break if I inserted that scene between Adrien suiting up a second time and Marinette waking to urgent calls for help. 
> 
> Sabine's second purpose was to think through the process of akumatization. We've seen it in the show but it doesn't require or give a lot of explanation for the audience to understand; we accept that HawkMoth can akumatize people because of magic . But I wanted to ask how it works. That's why I stepped into Sabine's head at points: how is she feeling, what is HawkMoth telling her, how much control does she have? It seems that negative emotions drive a person to grant HawkMoth access to their body. He is drawn to them and can monitor them... somehow? I always thought he could see what they were doing through their eyes. But they have to speak aloud if they want to communicate, and he can't puppet them, only give suggestions and demand his prizes. Even so, we've seen plenty of villains defy him and go after their own goals before fighting Ladybug and Chat. 
> 
> I rather think that the way akumatization works is this: the butterfly enters, the person gains new powers and their negative emotions take the reins. A lot of their usual inhibitions fall away, leaving them free to pursue things they wouldn't normally go after. Some villains, such as Dark Cupid (Kim), already have somewhat predatory sexual undertones to their characters. Mother Hood (Sabine) is an extreme version of this. Chat Blanc is too. Mostly for my own gratification, of course, but I did want to depict the world of Miraculous as a little bit darker and more realistic than it actually is in the show. 
> 
> "Freed" from the checks and balances of her normal psyche, Mother Hood is cold and controlling, and doesn't WANT to consider her family while she's running around town victimizing men. Her mind is so focused on her "child" that the connections between her and her actual daughter and husband are frayed. That's why she doesn't seem to recognize Marinette, and why she treats her so harshly. It's also why she sees Chat as a piece of meat, to take and eat. I'm not sure if it's been specified in the show, but I don't think anyone knows Chat's age? It's been rumored that Ladybug is a highschooler, but I don't think we ever got a similar rumor/confirmation for Chat. 
> 
> I hope I did Chat's character justice. I had nothing specific in mind for him other than turning into Chat Blanc, and I wanted a masturbation scene. I was extremely disappointed by the canon version of Chat Blanc. I had this idea built up in my head that he was this obsessive hunter, come into being after a particularly sexually-charged mission. So that's what I tried to portray here. 
> 
> A lot of the themes center around power, control, and sexuality. I might do a rewrite later to convey certain things better.


End file.
